"This shall they have for their pride,
Because they have been insolent, and have magnified themselves
Against the people of Jehovah Sabaoth."
Here again the Moabite Stone bears abundant testimony to the justice of the prophet's accusations; for there Mesha tells how in the name and by the grace of Chemosh he conquered the cities of Israel; and how, anticipating Belshazzar's sacrilege, he took the sacred vessels of Jehovah from His temple at Nebo and consecrated them to Chemosh. Truly Moab had "magnified himself against Jehovah."
Prosperity had produced other baleful effects beside a haughty spirit, and pride was not the only cause of the ruin of Moab. Jeremiah applies to nations the dictum of Polonius—
"Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,"
and apparently suggests that ruin and captivity were necessary elements in the national discipline of Moab:—
"Moab hath been undisturbed from his youth;
He hath settled on his lees;
He hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel;
He hath not gone into captivity:
Therefore his taste remaineth in him,
His scent is not changed.
Wherefore, behold, the days come—it is the utterance of Jehovah—
That I will send men unto him that shall tilt him up;
They shall empty his vessels and break his[224] bottles."
As the chapter, in its present form, concludes with a note—
"I will bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter days—it is the utterance of Jehovah"—
we gather that even this rough handling was disciplinary; at any rate, the former lack of such vicissitudes had been to the serious detriment of Moab. It is strange that Jeremiah did not apply this principle to Judah. For, indeed, the religion of Israel and of mankind owes an incalculable debt to the captivity of Judah, a debt which later writers are not slow to recognise. "Behold," says the prophet of the Exile,—